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queen bee breeding

hello,
i think i have looked at two many different sorces of information and got myself confused
how does queen bee rearing start and work?
and how do you start up another hive when you already have one?
i'm about to build my own hive and keep bees so need some help before
ralph
sorry hope i'm not a pain

Re: queen bee breeding

Re: queen bee breeding

Because there are many ways to queen rearing, you have to know what is your goal.
There are many variation of it. That is why you are confused here.
Do you want to try the complicate methods first or try the easy methods first?

Re: queen bee breeding

I have to agree with ralph that this is a bit difficult to work out for a beginning bee keeper. I have not reared queens, and am also trying to figure the "system" out, so I'll give my understanding and hope someone chimes in with better info.

From what I have read, the thing that is really necessary for raising a modest number of queens (say, 5-20+) in a sideliner/hobbyist apiary is a sufficient number of mating nucs. You can use any old hive that you've rendered queenless to rear queen cells (cell starter), either by grafting (which is a bit involved for a beginner) or by something fairly simple, such as the Alley Method (http://www.bushfarms.com/beesalleymethod.htm) or even the Fatbeeman quick-n-dirty version of the Alley method (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y64cKn4rLNM).

The hard part is coming up for a home for the queens to emerge into. You need 1 hive per queen, otherwise its gonna be a WWE Smackdown. You can either buy/build a bunch of mini mating nucs, which have the advantage of not taking a lot of bees away from your honey producing hives, or you can buy/build full size nucs. Full size nucs obviously require several (full size) frames of bees from your hives just to rear one queen. Another alternative is use a regular hive body, but insert wooden partitions every 2 or 3 frames, and construct a cover with an equal number of entrances, making essentially a queen-rearing apartment complex. I suppose you could use your cell starter for this, "converting" it into a mating nuc by inserting the partitions and changing the cover after you've removed the frame of queen cells and placed them into cages (or just pressing them into a frame, again a la fatbeeman), so potentially you could use that method to raise 10 queens in a couple of 10-frame langstroths, as opposed to buying/building 10 mini mating nucs. Thus allowing a fairly small apiary to churn out queens without having a lot of specialized mini mating nucs, grafting tools, etc.

Re: queen bee breeding

The book "increase essentials" by dr larry connors is a great place to start. But it all boils down to the fact that any queenless hive which has the required resources will try - often successfully - to make a queen. Everything else is about quality and efficiency.

Re: queen bee breeding

Queen cell mini catching cages.
I use these to capture queens that emerged on different date.
This way they will not kill off each others. Easy to make from metal window screen.
Doesn't cost a lot to make some.

Re: queen bee breeding

I have 2 beehives, one almost one year old and another 2 months, both up and running quite well. In India, a box (with queen & bees) costs around $100, box alone around $50-60 without bees and queen $40-$50. I got my third box built, but want to use a new queen from one of those boxes, just to experiment and make use of other 2 colonies, instead of buying again. How do I get started? I see so much info available here, but any guidelines or threads to start with will be very helpful...Thanks...

Re: queen bee breeding

Originally Posted by shmiusa

I have 2 beehives, one almost one year old and another 2 months, both up and running quite well. In India, a box (with queen & bees) costs around $100, box alone around $50-60 without bees and queen $40-$50. I got my third box built, but want to use a new queen from one of those boxes, just to experiment and make use of other 2 colonies, instead of buying again. How do I get started? I see so much info available here, but any guidelines or threads to start with will be very helpful...Thanks...